KBC launches new release of high-fidelity analytics technology

KBC (A Yokogawa Company) has announced the release of a new high-fidelity analytics technology, Visual MESA Multi-Period Optimizer (VM-MPO) 6. It will allow scheduling engineers and operators to incorporate more precise forecasts into the decision making process, over various time horizons when dealing with multiple time-dependent constraints, resulting in increased optimization benefits of their energy systems.

Changes in electricity price contracts (e.g. real time pricing, time of use pricing, critical peak pricing), variability of natural gas prices, and the capability of process plants to become electricity providers to the grid while managing a wide variety of energy sources (fossil fuels, renewables, etc.), impose unprecedented challenges to scheduling engineers that aim to deliver the most economic dispatch of energy to meet demand.

With this release, KBC’s first-to-market integrated optimal scheduling and real-time optimisation offering for energy systems now has seamless integration with analytics platforms and external data analytics services to better predict unmodelled variables. The improved forecasts generated by these new capabilities result in users now being able to trigger more aggressive optimal actions, realising additional benefits available in the system.

“Within any business decision, uncertainty exists due to time-related assumptions,” comments Andy Howell, CEO of KBC. “We are very excited to release VM-MPO 6 to make the process industries smarter, more real time, nimble and agile, and in doing so, accelerate customers’ ability to save energy, achieve sustainability, and deliver operational excellence.”

VM-MPO 6 brings together data analytics, first principles and multi-period constraints in a purpose-built mixed integer optimisation to continually ensure that the right decisions are made about which generation assets to start up, shut down and where to deploy energy at lowest economic cost. Case studies have demonstrated this new release’s ability to improve optimisation benefits by 5%.